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Podcasting Goes Pay-to-Play
James Draven writes "For the last year, people have been wondering - how to make money off podcasts? Some have dabbled with advertising, some with user donations, but now the most popular podcast on iTunes is moving to a subscription model. Bit-Tech is reporting that the Ricky Gervais Show will cost $7 a month starting next week."
This seems like a really bad idea.. I've never heard a single podcast that I would pay for, even a few dollars a month.
I was very surprised to find out, but iTunes actually lets you access a podcast protected through the regular HTTP basic or digest authentication.
When you subscribe to such a feed iTunes will ask you for a username and a password.
Try subscribing to this feed in iTunes, for example: private feed
So if your server lets you setup your own HTTP protection through .htaccess or what not, you can password protect your podcast. If you combine this with SSL, you have a pretty solid protection mechanism, but for just family stuff I would think that the digest authentication is good enough. Just don't use basic authentication because that will send the password over in cleartext.
More on this topic in my blog
(Disclaimer, I write podcasting software for the mac os x)"Podcast" = recording.
"Subscription" = paying for new recordings.
"Podcasting goes pay-to-play" = buying newly released audio recordings with money. Haven't we been doing that in music shops for decades?
Is this news just because the word "podcast" sounds more exciting than "a recording"?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
It's been show that you can generate great interest in online content with a yearly subscription, but not with montly subs. When people think about a montly subscription they start to add the numbers in their head and quickly figure out that the thing isn't worth the money... but yearly subscriptions feel less painful. You feel like you're going to get this forever for this one price. Like you're buying the show rather than renting it.
Plus you get way more subscriptions this way from people who eventually drop out. Going for a low cost yearly is much smarter than a higher cost montly rate.
My first exposure to cable was in Manhattan, where people welcomed it because it was damn near impossible to pull a signal. After that, it was a great idea to pay money to not see commercials, but then the commercials came anyway =( Thank god for TiVo, but I digress. My point is you are the first individual that I have ever heard saying "people thought cable was suicide".
The jury is definitely still out on Satellite radio. You did read about how XM's loss widening this week, didn't you?
I'll bet a few idiots will pay for their podcast, however, I don't think it's going to work very well. First, people are going to have to go seek out the audiobook version of their content on a weekly basis, instead of having it auto-sync'ed to their iPod. Second, this is going to greatly decrease their audience, which is never good for performers. Third, they've priced themselves out of the market, a podcast is not worth $3.50/hr when TV is going for 1.99/hr.
I could see paying a subscription of about $7/month to a podcast aggregator site to gain access to all of the content new and archived for maybe a season. Like I said, some people will buy their show but most people won't. In the process, they have alienated their audience, thus the reference to shooting oneself in the foot.
cat